Visibility will kill management

The main issue with social technology in the corporate context is visibility. These technologies will show anyone anything, and that is terribly annoying to management, that has made a living on control and information brokerage.

And therefore management needs to evolve ... but not in the direction most managers fear. Really, we need more managers, not less. We need stronger skilled managers, able both to manage content and context, people and process, internal and external.

Because visibility does not come with talent. It's only visibility. And the capability for insight, that would allow any employee to act on this new-found access to most information / knowledge / people / issues is definitely not a given. On the contrary, it is talent that will be long in the making for most people, notwithstanding what the tenants of "generation flux" may say.

Social technologies should have us working on increasing the number of managers, I mean of people entrusted with the responsibility of achieving the company's mission.

Obviously, as Dominique Turcq hinted at in a recent post, it should also have leaders thinking on this mission and on the corporation as an institution. But that is another story.

Facebook and the Commons

Should we think about Facebook business model or insist on it becoming ... a public utility ?

Dreams (and nightmares) of an HR leader

HR Officers need to jump on the driving seat (or committee) of major technology projects (HRIS ones, but also social business, big data, mobility and even BI). Otherwise, they might loose their influence or even worse, their soul, in the next few years.

From social objects to business objects ?

Moving from a document-centered work organization to a relationship-focused one is a long, difficult journey. Adapting some insights about social objects to the business world can help accelerate the pace.

Future of organizational development: framing for a learning experience

If HR is to assume a leading role in the next generation, social, organization, it should lead the way in framing the working & learning environment that will allow the emergence of meaningful learning and working patterns within this organization.

This next generation, social, enterprise builds upon external trends, as it is now commonly admitted that the social web is opening new horizons for business organizations, from user experience (consumerization of IT) to new learning models (social learning). By understanding the inner workings of this social web and successfully adapting them to the specific goals and constraints of business organizations, HR has yet another opportunity to reinvent itself and the way it impacts organization and talent development.

Unleadership

If we are serious and ambitious in our drive to transform our organizations into next generation social enterprises (or social businesses), we need to unlearn most of what we think we knew about leadership, and focus our R&D efforts on next generation leadership.

Managers beware : Is there a Corporate Jasmine Revolution lurking out there?

Something is at work deep down our corporations, that pushes employees to resist and opose the ideas of those managers that wouldn't change or accept the new social reality.

Towards an app-powered culture

Beyond Enterprise 2.0 and Social Business, there's the dream of something resembling corporate democracy - apps  could help get you there. If, that is, you have the right kind of leadership.

Social business in 2012 : the threats from within

I have been going through some of the predictions for the 2012 Social Business Year (for instance, here, here). It is clear from these and other predictions that the potential of Social Business to transform our corporations has been widely covered, so I thought I would concentrate on the two or three threats that I see lurking over social business delivering all its promises